In 1936 Dmitry Medvedev was sent as a NKVD intelligence agent abroad. In 1938 he returned to the Soviet Union and was appointed the head of the NKVD department of Norillag, a GULAGlabor camp in Norilsk. Few months later Medvedev was fired from NKVD officially for "unjustified closures of criminal investigations" against political prisoners of the GULAG.